The winter Months used to not be accounted for,
they were the annual time away from Time;
a time of parties, feasts, and, shall we say, celebration of survival;
celebrating the harvest and, shall we say, fertility;
that you and yours may outlast
the cold, dead Winter.

January was eventually recognized as part of time
and was named for the Roman two-faced God Janus;
a time of duplicity and duality
a time of unpredictability
a time, somewhat analogous to a gateway leading to a new cycle
though, perhaps also, a time for looking the other way, as it were:

I suspect that the expression "When in Rome..."
was derived from those Winter non-months of debauchery
where the people from out-of-town would come into Rome,
where the party was, company was plentiful, and it was warm,
and decide to partake in various aspects of pagan Roman life otherwise inaccessible to them
while distributing few, if any, regards for their new-found brumal unorthodoxy
and hence the expression: "When in Rome, do as the Romans."

That's just my theory on it, though.
Take it or leave it, or perhaps somewhere in between.

Happy Winter!
Time to drink, feast, **** and be merry!
It's only Human, apparently!

Ideas turned ideology create
Infinite numbers of lines in the sand
Here's mine and there's yours
Serotonin deficient lives
Laying dreams on the back of others
Then shunning them for breaking

Men told to **** the marrow
Women told to **** the ****
Pigeon holed sweater wearers
Hanging the future in neat picture frames
Staring intently to help it self-materialize

Junkies pry the world limb by limb
Holding hands in *** ba ya
As they skip off windowed cliffs
Red light burning away the innocence
Of hairless brown rabbits
Hypnotized boxers fighting ideas
While onlookers are sold to slavers
Breathless New Ageisms
Creating an orthodoxy of unorthodoxy
Visions of trains in a spotless horizon
Idolizing the unreal,  a hope for hope
Destined for eternal disappointment

Train stations of thought
Ideas all meeting at once
Concepts jumping tracks
Unorthodoxy hopping empty cars
Hitchhiking onto the edge of my philosophies

Runaway trains
Head on collisions
Hypocrisy
And contradictions
What a wreck.

And when the passengers get here
They never stop moving
New positions are always hiring
Since Neurons are always firing

Conductors conducting
Railway seminars
Ted talks a lot
But the passengers leave enlightened
Sharing ideas with other train stations
Miles and miles away

So keep the trains on schedule
Keep the trains on track
Train tracks tracking
New thoughts
Through open minds

Steam will be pouring off my every word
So keep the engines  running hot
I'll be a dragon before too long
Spitting fire

But when the philosophy gets too honest
I have to stay cold
Call it a polar express-ion of thought

All aboard!
Research when I get bored
Stay awake at 4am
Listen to the gears turn in the engine room

The whistle is blowing
Ideas chugging along with enough power
To flatten the pennies I laid there
Intellectual suicide
Of misconceptualized life

Smash your two cents
That buys the ticket
Learn to travel
Learn and travel
Travel your learning

Take the train

POETRY AND PAINTING

I write poems the way Van Gogh painted paintings
the last two years of his life. Wild, frenzied, crazy,
incredible, unique masterpieces that only his inner
genius could appreciate. Theo tried, but with few
successes. Self-portraits after self-portraits, the
potato eaters, a chair somewhat skewed, an old
man in sorrow, madness on his palette, yellow, blue,
and aquamarine--mixed up, all together in blends
and ways only a genius could create by scores.
Or was his madness the result only of a gift no
other artist had? Maybe my words and phrases
are phases only craziness can open. Maybe Van
Gogh did not know how to be ordinary, a ferry from
the sky, a mystical message he could not hear but
only feel. Cypress trees, sunflowers galore, paint
more he said. So many cannot see, the glory of
the stars that are ours only if we are blind to the
mundane but open to unorthodoxy he alone
perceived. Van Gogh poured himself on his can-
vases that Theo could not sell, paintings by the
hundreds that now hang on walls around the world
so those who eschew society’s mores are free
and unafraid to know Van Gogh and how he
understood the universe as no one else ever will.
Poetry and painting, you see, are one in the same.

Copyright 2020 Tod Howard Hawks